Spatial orders of memory and knowledge. Architectural schemes for collections in seventeenth-century Sweden

Abstract

In seventeenth-century Europe, theories of knowledge were developed in symbiosis with the growth of new architectural types, themselves devised for the practices of science, collecting and ordering of knowledge. The period’s intellectual endeavours, so the project argues, have subsequently been unsurpassed in utilising the built environment and mental architecture systematically for cognitive processes, and in ordering theory by means of spatial, architectural and urban structures. Theories of memory and knowledge continued to be practised and developed parallel to the progress and consolidation of new scientific ideals. The project studies the growth of the architecture for collections and science in Sweden in the mid- and late seventeenth century, and the theory imported and developed in context with them. Central to the project is the argument that the collecting schemes of the seventeenth century were not premature undertakings that evolved into late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century museums, but cultural forms of collecting that only in part survived in subsequent practices.